


New Rules

by AthenasAspis (agentandromeda)



Category: Borderlands (Video Games)
Genre: Angst, Betrayal, M/M, No Happy Ending Fest, Post-Canon, rhys gets fuckin stabbed, vaughn is ooc
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-22
Updated: 2018-08-22
Packaged: 2019-07-01 04:26:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 909
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15766587
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/agentandromeda/pseuds/AthenasAspis
Summary: Rhys and Vaughn try to find a place to hide an Eridian artifact.Things escalate from there.





	New Rules

**Author's Note:**

> i wanna say im sorry for this but im truly not  
> this is just another installation in my continuing effort to kill all the other gayperion shippers  
> there can only be one

“What is it?” Vaughn asked for the umpteenth time, almost as if he was checking to make sure Rhys hadn’t thought of anything. Rhys shrugged.

“Could be anything,” he responded. The artifact that floated before them twisted itself into convoluted shapes, as if it wanted to be anywhere but that remote Atlas facility.

It was just the two of them there, trying to find a place to put the mysterious object they had found in the Vault of the Traveller. They needed somewhere to put it until they could talk to Lilith and find out what it was, and the less people that knew its location, the better. Rhys liked being alone with Vaughn, even if he couldn’t ever get up the courage to say what needed to be said. 

Vaughn walked up to the artifact, and before Rhys could say anything, tapped it with his finger. It squirmed, but didn’t hurt him. 

“It’s Eridian,” Vaughn said in a hushed tone.

“It came from a Vault,” Rhys snorted. “I should hope so.”

Vaughn frowned. 

“People are going to be looking for this, Rhys. And Atlas is the first place they’ll look. I can keep it safe at Helios; everyone thinks we’re just bandits.”

Hiding in plain sight. Vaughn had always been good at that. No one suspected the tiny nerd was the one manipulating every rule to bring their enemies down. 

Rhys shook his head.

“Helios is right next to where the Vault opened. I appreciate it, bro, but it’ll be safest in the Atlas vault. No one’s been in this facility for years.” 

Vaughn shrugged.

“Whatever you say, bro. Anyway, there’s, ah, something I wanted to talk about.”

“Oh?” Rhys asked, attempting to sound nonchalant. He failed. His voice shot up an octave. 

Vaughn stepped slowly towards him.

“I need to tell you something,” he said, impossibly softly.

“Go ahead,” Rhys breathed. 

Vaughn looped his arm around Rhys’s neck, bringing his head down so Vaughn could press a kiss to his lips. With every millisecond they were touching, lightning sprung through Rhys’s circuits and his brain couldn’t think of anything, couldn’t process anything, couldn’t even come to terms with the fact that Vaughn was kissing him. 

Vaughn pulled away to rest his head on Rhys’s shoulder, and whispered in his ear,

“For the record, I am sorry about this.”

Rhys didn’t have time to ask what he meant before the knife had entered his stomach. 

“Wh—“ he barely choked out, his mouth welling with blood. Vaughn pulled out the knife with uncaring force.

Rhys fell to his knees, one hand on the ground, one hand pressed fruitlessly against his stomach.

“V-Vaughn?” he cried.

“I can’t let you have this, Rhys,” he murmured, caressing the artifact. “You wouldn’t know what to do with it.” He glanced back down with thinly veiled contempt. “There’s no room for a guy like you on Pandora. I don’t need you anymore.”

“What do you mean?” Rhys choked. “Vaughn, we-we’re friends, we’re bros! What are you doing?” He gritted his teeth against the growing burn in his midsection.

Vaughn’s eyes glittered. Standing over Rhys like that, bloody knife in one hand and artifact in the other, Rhys couldn’t even see the shadow of the accountant he used to know. 

“We were friends,” Vaughn corrected. “I gotta say, your data mining skills? The cybernetics? The way you can work a room? It was useful up on Helios. But things have changed. You couldn’t even find out what this thing does,” Vaughn sneered. “I think maybe it’s time you realized that I’m the one who’s destined to be on top.” His semi-smile turned ugly. “Years in your shadow, Rhys. Years as you prattled on about how you’d get to the top. Years of you leaving me behind.”

Vaughn knelt down to look almost quizzically into Rhys’s eyes.

“Different rules on Pandora, buddy.”

He stood back up with an uncaring shrug.

“I’ll be taking over Atlas. The others will be sad about the bandits killing you, of course, but they’ll get over it. And in the end…no one will miss you.” 

Rhys scrabbled at the floor, trying desperately to stand up. Vaughn put an end to his efforts with a quick kick to his stomach. Blood came spurting out of Rhys’s wound as he fell back to the ground with a cry of pain.

“I don’t want to kill you, Rhys,” Vaughn told him. “But you’ve cheated death before, and I can’t risk it.”

Rhys’s eyes widened as Vaughn pulled out a shiny Hyperion pistol.

“Vaughn, wait!” he begged, “We can work this out, buddy! I—I’ll give you the artifact, I’ll give you Atlas, I just—please don’t do this.”

“I’m sorry, Rhys,” Vaughn whispered, and pulled the trigger.

Rhys’s body went slack, his face contorted in permanent shock. Vaughn holstered the pistol.

Rhys would have done well to learn from Hyperion, like him and Yvette. But instead he had the naïveté to assume that the rules were different for him, that he could succeed with, not in spite of, others. 

Vaughn tucked the artifact into his pocket. With both Hyperion and Atlas at his command, he would be a force to be reckoned with.

He looked back down at Rhys’s body with a twinge of regret. Rhys had been the closest thing he’d ever had to a friend.

Friends weren’t worth it on Helios. And they sure as hell weren’t worth it on Pandora.


End file.
